He it is Who created for you all that is in the earth, in other words, the lower aspect which is the world of the elements in its entirety since it constitutes the origin points of your creation and the substrata of your existence and subsistence; then He presided over [the heaven], that is, He turned evenly to the upper aspect - thumma ('then') is used to indicate a separation between the two aspects and the two moments of existentiation, the originational (ibdāʿī) and the creational (takwīnī), and not a lapse between the two time periods, so that the creation of the earth necessarily precedes that of the heavens; [and He levelled them seven heavens and He has knowledge of all things]: He then proportioned them as seven heavens according to what the generality thinks, for the eighth and the ninth [heavens] are [respectively] the seat (kursī) and the throne (ʿarsh) in their manifest dimension. In reality the lower aspect is the corporeal world, like the body and its limbs given its inferior rank in relation to the spiritual world which is the upper aspect referred to by the expression 'heaven'; thumma is used to indicate a separation between [the act of] creation and the command; 'and He levelled them seven heavens' is an allusion to the ranks of the world of spiritual beings: the first is the angelic earthly realm and the forces of the soul and the jinn; the second is the world of the soul; the third is the world of the heart; the fourth is the world of the intellect; the fifth is the world of the mysteries; the sixth is the world of the spirit while the seventh is the world of concealment, which is the spiritual mystery distinct from the mystery of the heart. It is to this that the Commander of the Believers [ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib], peace be upon him, alluded when he said: 'Ask me about the paths of the heavens, for I know them better than the paths of the earth'. Its paths are the states and the stations such as renunciation, reliance, satisfaction and the like. Know that the intellect when referred to by the term wisdom is the spirit in the terminology of the Sufis. And what we have referred to as the intellect in the terminology of the Sufis is the rational faculty that belongs to the speaking soul according to the philosophers. That is why the Sufis say that the intellect is the polished part of the heart illumined by the light of the spirit, while the heart is the speaking soul. Remember this lest [your] understanding become confused by the different terms [used].